


all the lights

by kiiouex



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Blood, Compulsive Behavior, Disassociation, Eye Trauma, Gore, Horror, M/M, Obsessive Behavior, POV Second Person, Self-Harm, Self-Mutilation, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-19 10:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4743683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dipper is blind; Bill can fix that for him. But the sight he grants Dipper isn't quite right, it lets him see things he shouldn't and makes all the little triangle symbols scattered around shine in the corner of his eye. He had never noticed how many there were before. They're getting brighter. </p><p>Please mind the tags, they're accurate for the whole story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really excited to be posting this! It's almost finished, chapters will probably every few days while I finish tweaking them, the tags are accurate through to the ending, time-wise it's somewhere before Sock Opera and after Dreamscaperers. 
> 
> It's really not a romantic Bill/Dip relationship but it's something I really wanted to write and explore, and I hope you all enjoy it! Please let me know any thoughts/feedback/criticism! Big thanks to the incredible [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) for beta-reading.

You wake up to the smell of hospital-level disinfectant, feeling the heavy throb of all your aches and a distant hint of wrongness at the back of your mind, but you don’t chase the feeling immediately. Your first worry is why it’s so _dark,_ and finding the source of the strange pressure against your eyes. You tentatively raise a hand to your face and feel the soft fibres of gauze, follow the fabric along to find bandages wrapped the whole way around your head, over your eyes.

You remember an incredibly bright flash of blue light.

“Dipper?” Mabel asks, and you turn your head in her direction while you hear the scrape of a chair, hurried footsteps, and then the full warmth of your sister throwing herself over you. “You’re awake!”

“Yeah,” you say, feeling for her hand. Her warmth is reassuring, but her words are not. “Did they… did they think I wasn’t going to wake up?”

“No, no,” she says quickly, “Nothing like that, I’m just - glad to see you’re okay!”

You nod slowly, touch the bandages on your face again. “I’m okay?”

The pause before she speaks is enough of an answer on its own. “You might be!” she says, and the disadvantage to knowing someone so well is being able to tell when they’re lying to make you feel better. “The doctors say there’s still a chance that… that you won’t be, uh…”

Panic is rising in you, and the bandages are over your _eyes_. You remember the blue light, you remember starting the fight with Gideon but not ending it, and there’s no way to contain the fear in your voice as you demand, “What, Mabel? Won’t be _blind?_ ”

“There’s still a chance,” she whispers.

You get the bandages off two days later, and you blink into blackness.

Mabel cries for you, makes a thousand promises about how she’ll always be there to help you, and you… You spend a long time opening and closing your eyes as though clearing them might fix them. You hear about the aftermath on the radio, that Gideon’s in prison, you touch your eyelids, you touch your eyes, you think of a thousand ways that things could have gone differently so that you wouldn’t have been blinded.

You think you might be in shock. Even you can sense the deadened edge to all your actions. But no one expects anything of you. Stan lets you off work. Mabel, Wendy and Soos all promise to cover your shift so you can ‘rest’ and that they’ll hang out with you later, and you are left alone in the lounge with the television blaring some nonsense. You try to make the best of it, to follow the show and enjoy what you can from what you can hear, but every time a character shouts ‘look at that!’ you wince. You last about half an hour before you give up and turn the set off.

You make your way upstairs, fumbling on little steps and feeling for walls and railings with a slow sensitivity you never needed before. Every stair feels taller and further from the next than it should be and while people keep talking to you about adjusting and adapting, you can’t imagine getting more confident than you are. The journal is still on your nightstand where you left it and you thumb the edges of the cover gently, hear the reassuring crinkle of the pages as you open it.

All your life, Mabel has been the social twin and you have been the smart one. All your life, when other activities have failed you and people shut you out, you have turned to reading. The journal, your most beloved book, sits in your hands, as impenetrable as a block of wood.

You think it’s fair that you cry a little.

You last one more week. It feels almost impressive, that you manage an entire week in the dark. People support you but you feel like your mind is rotting without visual stimulus, and you know people live like this, and you know people are born like this, but you can't keep the idea out of your head that you _don't have to_. It's Gravity Falls and there are ways in which you know more than the doctors. You last one week. And then you ask Mabel to help you.

"You want me to read a spell for you?" she asks. Your journal is in your hands, even if it is poor assurance, and you’re sure she can see how reluctant you are to share it with her. How jealous you are. "What are you thinking, Dipper? Is there an anti-blindness spell?"

"No," you tell her, "I remember, I read the journal thoroughly, there's nothing to just undo this. But... there's someone who might have the power to."

She sees what you’re thinking and you can feel her interest withdraw instead of any physical recoil. "You're not thinking of summoning Bill?" she asks you, apprehension clear in her voice. "Dipper, no, you can't, you don't know what he'll ask for! It's not -"

"Worth it?" you finish for her, and she goes quiet. You're maybe being cruel. You're maybe going to continue being cruel. "I think it's up to me to decide what I can live with, Mabel, and if there's any option to let me see again... so I can read, so I can work, so I can do _anything_ \- you know how important it is to me."

"But, Bill," she says, all soft and sad. "He's a demon, Dipper. You can't trust him."

"We don't even know what he'll ask for."

She's quiet, turning it over in her head, and you hope she'll put you before the risk. You're not on the verge of anything drastic but you think you might get there if you're left alone in your head long enough. "Okay," she says, "We can just - see what he wants. And if it's anything _bad_ or weird or cryptic, or like 'a favour' that's going to be ironic and horrible later -"

"Then I won't make the deal," you say, and your voice is rich with the rush of relief. "Thank you, Mabel, thank you. The spell to summon him has got to be in Gideon's journal somewhere - can you get it?"

She gets it, and she finds the spell. She makes a few more weak attempts to turn you off the path you're set on, but they're so easy to ignore. You're just going to see what Bill wants, that's all. You're just going to talk to him and look at the trade and if he can restore your eyes - and he can, you're so sure he can - and then you can make your decision. You don't tell Mabel that his price would have to be pretty high to deter you. You don't tell Mabel that your mind is basically already made up. She's your twin; she probably knows.

On your insistence, the two of you wait until nightfall before you head outside to conjure the demon. You don't want anyone interrupting the ritual - don't want anyone spying on the exchange, like you did to Gideon - but Mabel complains about finding her way in the dark. You don't explain it to her. She draws the circle and sets up the candles, and every part of you aches to double-check her work because you don't know how much room for error there is but you doubt there's much. You can't, though, and she can see the nervous way you're clenching and unclenching your fists and tells you she's being careful. Her hands are warm when she takes yours, and you can feel her pounding heartbeat in her pulse, her nervous apprehension, but she's still doing this for you and you are so grateful.

The candles smell like vanilla against the familiar pine-tree-and-dirt scent of the woods, and you wait while Mabel reads out the incantation. You want to see the colour leech from the world, you want to see the glow and the terrible little triangle you're trying to summon. The idea that Bill could be watching you when you can't see, that he could drift around you and you'll be stuck dumbly turning your head to follow has you chewing on the corner of your vest. Mabel swats a hand at you to get you to stop, and then she's finished the spell.

The woods seem silent. You think everything gets colder, but that might be wishful thinking. You want to ask Mabel about the colours, but you're afraid to break the silence, you don't want to do anything to disrupt Bill's arrival. Mabel's hand is clammy in yours and you squeeze it tight, so glad to have her.

There's a burst of sulphur, and that's you're only warning before you can _feel_ Bill's presence in a way you never have before, the lightest pressure on your shoulders accompanying his spark of manic laughter. "Well, well, well, here's two people I wasn't expecting to see again! Pine Tree and Shooting Star, calling me out like this! What a surprise!"

"Bill," you start, head turned to the sound of his voice, "I want to make a deal with you." Mabel grips your hand a little tighter, and you wish you could _see_ Bill because his diminutive form makes him so much easier to deal with. Just his voice and the sense of _power_ he gives off is unsettling.

"Do you?" Bill asks, sounding delighted. "I'm going to guess it's something to do with your broken eyes! Looks like you got hit by a bad bit of magic, kid!"

You grimace, but admit, "Yeah, that... happened.” He laughs again, and you didn’t really expect anything different, but you’re still glad to be talking to him, to be actually taking a step forwards. “Could you fix them?"

"I could!" Bill replies. Mabel's fingers are digging in to the edge of your hand a bit viciously but you're not about to shake her off at a moment like this. "And in exchange..."

He seems to pause for a long time and you ache to see what he's doing, you can't tell if it's the kind of silence you should interrupt or not. Mabel makes the decision for you; "What do you want in exchange?"

"How about nothing?" Bill says.

You can't have heard that right. "Nothing?"

"That's right! I'll give you sight again as a gift, out of the goodness of my many hearts." There's mocking edge to his words that you don’t like, but it's not like you were ever going to take Bill on faith.

"It has to be a trick," Mabel says to you. There's no point in whispering but she does anyway, so close that you can hear the tight pinch of anxiety to her words. "There's no way he's just going to do it, he'll make you see monsters or something. There's no way it's just a good deal, Dipper!"

You hesitate. Your head knows that Mabel is probably definitely right and there is a hidden drawback that you haven't noticed, but you really can't tell what the drawback to _free_ is. You have to check. "So that's the deal, you'll just... restore my vision?"

"Yep! What can I say, I like you kid, don't want you stumbling around and knocking your teeth out on a rock or anything!" You can hear the grin in his voice. "Come on, what do you think?"

"Dipper," Mabel hisses, more urgently.

There is almost absolutely a drawback to this. You think that maybe, if you _know_ you're making a bad decision, it makes it a little less bad in some kind of self-aware, self-congratulatory way. You pull your hand out of Mabel's, try not to hear her little cry of distress, and you say, "Deal!"

There's a burst of light, a violent gold, and a second later you're reeling as everything around you burns like a supernova. You scream and cover your eyes, vaguely aware of Mabel shrieking your name and clinging to you. Bill is laughing, saying, "Demonic sight takes a second to adjust to, kid! Hold on!"

You blink a lot until the light dies down to manageable levels, and when you feel like looking around won't blind you a second time, you dare to move protective fingers away from your eyes.

You can see. Your new vision does not have colour, but you can _see_. Mabel is an inch from your face, rendered in greyscale and blinking tearfully as she watches you struggle to focus on her. “Dipper?” she breathes, “Can you see?”

“Yeah,” you say, a reverent exhalation. You can see the trees and the candles and your sister’s trembling smile. “I can!”   

"How do you like it?" Bill asks, and you turn to look at him.

You scream.

The triangle you saw before is like a mask, a weird little puppet held aloft by the demon. He's inky black and burning with blue fire at the edges, triangular body held in one of about six arms. He's grinning, his smile stretching so wide that it curves off his face until the ends meet, a perfect circle of teeth that never closes. "Glad you like it," he says, and laughs his eerie, echoing laugh, before the blue fire of his body burns him up and he's gone.

You look around at the woods, dull black and grey with the odd sliver of white in the moonlight. "Is the colour back?" you ask Mabel.

"Yeah," she says, and frowns, trying to follow your line of sight. "You can't see it?"

"Not colour," you say. You’d thought it was a side-effect of Bill’s presence, but it’s hard to care about the drawbacks when the alternative is blindness. “It’s better than nothing.”  

She grins, throws her arms around you, buries you in a hug. "That was super dangerous," she tells you, "But I'm so glad it worked!"

You smile, and hug her back. "Thanks for the help, sis."

The two of you walk back to the Mystery Shack and it's a lot easier now you don't have to pick your way over the uneven ground, now that you can see where you're putting your feet. The grey grass underfoot is unsettling, but you think you'll adjust. It's certainly better than nothing. Out of the corner of your eye, you think you can see glimmers of gold in the woods, but whenever you turn your head to look, they're gone.

"Something wrong, bro?" Mabel asks you and you hesitate, but shake your head. "Come on, then," she says, smothering a yawn. "It's really late."

You go to bed, and for a second before you go to sleep you feel a flicker of fear that maybe when you wake up you'll be blind again. Inviting the darkness seems dangerous, the void behind your eyes feels terrifying because what if it lingers, what if you lose even your limited sight? But it won't happen. You're sure it won't, you're sure that even though there's going to be a catch, this isn’t it. You let yourself rest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The new episode was so good! Here's a chapter with lots of Bill to celebrate. Thanks so much to everyone who left a comment or kudos last time you're all so lovely :0 I hope you enjoy it!

Your eyes still work in the morning, but the greyscale is a lot more obvious in the light of day. The monochrome world around you is a little disorienting, and the way it washes everything out disheartening. Mabel puts on her brightest, rainbow sweater and you blink at the drabness of it before you shuffle yourself out of bed too.

You have put a reasonable amount of thought into how you're going to explain your dramatic recovery, and after ruling out any kind of stumbled-upon miracle cures that you also mysteriously can't find more of, you concluded that the simplest explanation will be the best one. So, when Grunkle Stan stares as you confidently step into the kitchen, you tell him, "My eyes just got better."

"What, overnight?" he asks. His disbelief is fully apparent, and you like being able to see his eyebrows rise, it only took you a week to miss all the lines on his face. As you guessed there's really nothing else he can say to that, so he switches to reassuring you how wonderful it is that you can see again. There's a little bead of light somewhere in the room that shifts whenever you try to look at it properly, but you do your best to put it out of your mind, eat breakfast with Mabel, and enjoy being able to read the back of Stan's paper.

Life gets back to normal fast. As pleased as everyone is about your recovery, they’re equally happy to return your morning shift to you. There are apparently no ill-effects from your temporary blinding, aside from the total colour blindness, and by midday they’re treating you like there was never anything wrong.

You wander around the woods in the afternoon, in search of anything interesting. By chance, you walk over the spot that Mabel used to summon Bill last night, and you realise that neither of you ever cleaned up the summoning circle. You push dirt over the edges with your heel, trying to rub it out so that no one else will find it and use it, but as soon as the dirt breaks the first line of the circle, the whole thing flares a brilliant electric blue. You stumble back, shocked, but nothing else happens, Bill doesn't manifest, the circle sits a dead black on the forest floor. You scuff it out as fast as you can and then hurry away from the spot, trying to calm your pounding heart with more reasonable explanations about how it was - you're not sure - a trick of the light?

You do not want to think too hard about what Bill said, about 'demonic vision'.

Flecks of light plague you all evening,  spots of yellow around the shack that keep catching in the corner of your eyes. When it's all the colour you have left, you think you might be fixating on it weirdly and you’re trying to downplay it but Mabel still catches you watching. "What are you looking at?" she asks confused, staring at the triangular window that had caught your attention.  

The light doesn’t seem real; it's something only you can see. You rub your eyes and you say, "Nothing", and you try not to panic because it _is_ nothing. You can ignore it, you can focus on the positives, like the fact that you can see at all, and you can just try to appreciate what you have. You still dream in colour, at least.

The next day, you find yourself staring at the window in the attic for ten minutes straight. Whenever you start to turn away, the edge blooms into gold, but under direct scrutiny it sits as grey as everything else. There is a very bad feeling beginning to bubble up the back of your throat, and you’re afraid to focus on it, to find the flaw in your new sight so soon. You stay in all day, and you read the journal, and if some letters seem to shine brighter than others you bite down your urge to investigate because you are so very sure you won't like what you find. The triangle at the front of the mystery Shack, the one on the rug on the lounge, every other little three-sided shape, you eye them all with suspicion and they all stare straight back at you.

You go into the woods the day after that, and you see it more clearly than you ever have, the thousand little eyes carved on to every tree. They glimmer gold out of the corner of your eyes, and you think they're starting to stare back at you. You don't like the hard edge to them all. You don't like the way the pupils seem to shift in piercing yellow.

"Finally noticing, Pine Tree?" Bill's voice says, and you jump at the sound, throw yourself away from the demon stalking around in the woods. He laughs at your reaction, his circle of fangs seeming to grind with amusement. The little triangular form isn't in his body anymore; he's black and burned gold, arms sliding out of the inky mass of his body as required, every edge of him burning gas-flame flue. "How do you like the new lights?"

"What are they?" you ask, and you are almost impressed with how conversational you're managing to sound. You think the lack of the 'mask' means that he's not really there, you think that he might be something only you can see and you think that is probably a very bad sign for you indeed. "Some kind of magic?"

Bill laughs as an answer, and slides closer, bright flares of his fire trailing after him. "Some kind!" he says, and you can hear the grin in his voice, and you realise that he is always, always grinning. "Who knows what they do? They’re all over this town though, you should take a walk around sometime, count them until you run out of numbers.”

You’re not sure you believe him – not while he’s grinning like that, not when they’re _shaped_ like him, shine in his same gold – but if he’s going to act like he doesn’t know, there’s not much you can do.

He steps a little closer to you, speaks in a tone like a weird mockery of camaraderie. “Are you enjoying it? My generous gift?" He puts a hand on your shoulder and it feels like treacle, thick and heavy and like it's going to stick. You pull yourself away fast, but he circles after you, predatory. "Don’t be like that, Pine Tree, we ought to be friends!”  

"Friends?" you repeat, and you think you've found the trick but are so very reluctant to find out more. “I don’t think I want to be your friend, Bill.”

"I did you a favour," Bill says, and his voice is not such a screech when it doesn't come through the triangle, it's hollow-edged and haunting. "You know it wasn't a deal, right kid, I don't owe you anything and if I want to take your vision back, I can." He sounds like he's joking, but he reaches a hand out to you and the pitch darkness of his form seems to suck at the edge of your eyes, seems to be pulling you in. It feels like he's actually stealing all the light from the world around you as everything goes dark, the shadows of him and the world mixing together into pure void.

" _Stop!_ " you scream, voice ragged, and he does. For a second everything hangs as it is, only a blurry half-light still reaching you, and then your vision restores itself. You pant with relief, run your hands over your face and blink a dozen times while Bill's halo of teeth beams at you. "Okay. Okay, we can be friends."

"That’s great, Pine Tree," he says, and he still sounds so chipper, like you’re just _chatting_ and he didn’t just try to drag the sight out of your eyes. "We ought to be! We’ve got the same eyes now, you know, no one else can see those lights but me!" He laughs again, the hollow sound scratching against your ears and making you wince. "Why not take a real good look at them, let me know how that goes!"

He incinerates himself again, a black soot shadow against the grass, but you don't feel any less alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3! Thanks again to everyone who's following it's really cool to hear what you think!

Now that you've started seeing the eyes you can’t stop. The colour never mutes under your gaze anymore, and everywhere you look there are flecks of gold outlining Cipher's sign, the only colour to your monochrome world. The blue of the summoning circle was just the one flash, and while you can sometimes pick up bits and pieces of other lights, tiny scraps of colour from symbols in the journal, mostly it's just gold on grey.

You tell yourself that the symbols were all there before you dealt with Bill, and just because you can see them doesn’t make them suddenly malevolent. You can't see the harm - well, you know there is harm, there's almost certainly something you don't know – but so far you haven’t figured out the explicit danger to simply _seeing_ the triangles, or letting Bill think you’re friends. There are so many of the little markings anyway; there are trees in the woods with hundreds of the things pressed deep into their bark.

You wonder how they all got there.

The longer you look at all the little triangles, the more you're curious about what they're for. You can see magic, Bill told you, which means there's some kind of power to the symbol? Is it a rune, an alchemical symbol, a spell? Something to do with the illuminati? By the shape you'd assume there was a link to Bill, but there’s nothing in the journals and no other avenues of investigation for you to explore. When Mabel is busy downstairs, you can't resist the temptation to test it for yourself.

A plain sheet of paper and a black pen are dull and colourless under your gaze. You use a ruler, draw a neat equilateral triangle over your paper, and study the dark edges, wondering if they'll light up while you watch. They do not, and the triangle remains as dull as every other one you have ever doodled or constructed for geometry. The lack of effect makes you wonder if the pupil is so key, and you draw it in roughly, just a circle in the centre. The eye stares back at you, and you only know it's an eye because of the shape; Mabel could have drawn it much better than you. You grimace, and fill in the pupil black.

It glows. Golden light floods it, a soft light around the edges but still complete, a clear signal that you've just done _something_. Plain ink has become magic in your hands and you tilt the paper, check the other side, hope to find any evidence of change. Nothing.

"What colour is this to you?" You ask Mabel, because you can't see the original ink under the glow.

She looks at it, and then at you, cocking her head curiously. "Black," she says. "What colour is it to _you_?"

"Black," you murmur, because that's the colour it's meant to be. You retreat from Mabel before she can ask.

Your eyes are still the same in your reflection, even if dark brown has become grey. You study your pupils carefully, guarding against any hint of a slit, but they're as round as they've ever been and you relax an inch. You knew dealing with Bill was going to have side effects and it still seems mild, manageable. It's still better than being blind. You breathe deep, and you go back to reading the journal and trying not to notice how Bill's little image glimmers at you from out of the page. The author liked to draw him a lot. At least you can see his real form now, you’ll know when he's nearby. He can't watch you without your knowing like you used to think he could.

You work hard in the shack and you get in 'bonding time' with Mabel and Stan over a furious game of Monopoly. Grunkle Stan cheats, you play strategically, Mabel lucks into a small fortune on the railways and waterworks, and by the end of the game there is so much fake money scattered around the lounge you know Waddles will have meals for days. It’s good and it’s normal and you are absolutely exhausted when you go to bed.

You sink back into your bed and shut your eyes, but the colours don't stop. The golden outline of the attic's triangular window seems burned into your retinas, seems to glare at you through your closed eyelids, and you scowl as you open your eyes again to check on it. It seems brighter than it did before, but you guess that it's just a side effect of having less contrast at night. You roll over, turn your back to it, and if there's a hint of yellow light in the room behind you, you ignore it.

It seems even brighter the next morning, but you think it's probably just because you're noticing it now. Nothing to worry about, you're sure. You head out.

It's a long day of work with no customers and you doodle another couple of triangles on a piece of scrap paper. They light up under your pen as you complete each one, and you find yourself smiling; it's nice to have a little colour in your world. Even though the markings are more ubiquitous than you ever noticed before, everything is still predominantly grey, and you fill up a sheet of paper with little golden lights.

"What are you drawing?" Mabel asks, staring over your shoulder. "Why so many triangles?"

"I like triangles," you say, a touch defensive. You don't want to tell her about the colour, she'll launch into something about how the deal was a bad idea - when it so absolutely wasn't - and you don't want to hear that. "They're nice."

“They look kind of like Bill?” she asks.

You find you don’t really like the question. Bill is dangerous; these lights are just _nice_. “Not really,” you tell her, “It’s uh, it’s an illuminati conspiracy kind of thing. But they’re just fun to draw.”

"Hmm," she says, and doodles one of her own on another bit of scrap paper. You're oddly delighted to find it still lights up as she finishes; anyone can add colour to your world. "Like this?"

"Just like that," you say, and you realise you're not supportive enough of her art when the hint of warmth in your voice makes her beam. She draws a page of triangles too, and you spend a very happy hour watching lights flare to life under both your hands.

You begin to notice how many things can be triangles, how easy it is to push things together into three-sided shapes, how many things can be sliced up into little triangular lines. You get pizza for dinner, and you carefully cut the crust off your slice to leave a neat little three-pointed shape. It doesn't glow, but it still seems a shame to eat it; you're just getting into the habit of making triangles, destroying them feels so counter-intuitive. Food is a lot less appealing in monochrome, too, but it's still no match for the smell of warm cheese and bacon and you down your meal guiltily.

You stare at the outline of the attic window for a long time before you go to bed. It looks brighter, you're sure it might actually _be_ brighter. Instead of an inner glow along the edges, it seems like a neon sign now, projecting it's light out into the rest of the room. But of course, it's not _real_ light, it's something only you can see and it doesn’t make reflections on anything else. It's a little disorienting, once you look at it for too long and the shadow patterns don't line up as they should. A furious glow for your eyes only; it's strange.

You sleep with your back to it, but you can still see some of the light under your eyelids.

The next day you spend drawing little triangles over everything you can find because the dull monotony of your world is starting to wear on you. You pin up the drawings you and Mabel did over your bed, doodle some on your wall in what promises to be erasable marker, and you carve little ones into the wood where you don't think anyone but you will notice. The glow is so beautiful, and knowing it's just for you is starting to feel oddly nice. You can’t usually keep secrets, there’s usually nothing about you Mabel doesn’t find out, but she physically _can’t_ share this one. It feels kind of fun.

Mabel is delighted at your new interest in art, and she seems to have made it something of a project too. She wants to make big ones, grand ones, and you supervise her drawing one in dirt outside the shack, a large triangle scraped into the dirt with a stick. At that scale, it's pretty wonky, but she draws the eye inside and it glows all the same, beautiful light that looks like it's streaming up from the ground. You ask her to do more, and she's thrilled to comply. You're carving them into trees, because some of the ones near the shack don't have enough. Some of the trees further in the woods are absolutely coated with little triangles, you saw them back before you were blinded, and you wonder how they'd look now that everything is glowing.

The summer wears on. Mabel stitches a triangle-eye sweater, and it streams golden on her, and you grin because it is so good to see your sister in colour again. She helps you paint them, fills up a huge sheet of paper to pin to your wall. Every night when you go to sleep, the glow outside your eyelids seems a little brighter, but it's good, it's such a nice to change from the grey of the world, you can't imagine taking any of the lights down and going back to grey grey grey. Gold is good. It's your new favourite colour.

There are no longer any moments you spend idle; every lull at work, in the ad breaks, in a conversation, you spend it drawing bright little triangles in glittering gold.

"What's this?" Grunkle Stan asks you one day when you’re behind the counter, holding up one of the chairs from the kitchen table. You stare a moment, assuming he doesn't want to hear you tell him what a chair is, before you notice one of his fingers tapping against the little triangles you cut along the edge of the wood.

"Oh, sorry," you say, rubbing the back of your neck and hoping you can play it off like a funny quirk. "Just... doodles."

"You've been doing a lot of these lately," Stan says with a frown. "Is this what the kids are into these days? Triangles?"

"Yep," you lie. "Mabel's been doing them too."

"I've noticed," he says, with a roll of his eyes, and he leaves you alone.

At dinner later, you notice a neat little strip of triangles along the edge of the table. You don't remember carving them in, but half an hour later when Mabel starts clearing the dishes, you catch yourself scratching a new one into the wood with your knife.

That night, you don't sleep with your back to the window, and it sears it's outline into your eyes so deep that it hangs over all your dreams like a frame. When you wake in the morning, it seems etched in, a hazy bright reminder whenever you blink. But you're not sure what it's a reminder of; that you need to make more triangles? That your eyes are not your own? You realise you have not thought of Bill Cipher in weeks, and you wonder if you should have. You wonder when his trick will become apparent.

You buy some new carving knives for the trees in the woods, meaning to spend your day in the forest with Mabel making more markings. She’s declared it the art project of the summer, some grand-scale thing like all the big artists do, like sensational public graffiti. She's making you wait on the porch, but every inch of the wood under you is engraved and there's nothing for you to detail. You jiggle your leg, your fingers twitch, not used to being so still. You haven't been still in a long time. The shack glows a brilliant gold around you, but you don't think it's enough yet, not while the sky is grey, the ground is grey, your own body completely monochrome.

"Dipper!" Mabel shouts, and you register her voice as shaky and panicked before you actually turn and see the look on her face. She seems terrified and you jump to your feet, matching her fear.

"What?" You ask, looking around, "What is it?"

She's staring at you, slowly points to your leg. "What are you doing?"

You look down. There's a three-pointed triangle carved into your thigh, and your knife is dripping with blood. As soon as you notice the injury, the corresponding pain rolls up into your brain and you wince. "Ow," you say dumbly, and you're about as scared as she is, "I... I don't know why I did that."

"You don't?"

You don't. The knife in your hand is shaking, dripping little flecks onto the ground. In your eyes, blood looks black, it leaks from your thigh, stains the hem of your shorts as the fabric shifts over the top point. It’s aching, stinging, terrifying that you didn't even notice you were doing it. And yet, it's incomplete. Your terror subsides as you mentally outline the place where the eye is meant to go, mark the spot for the pupil, but Mabel grabs your knife-arm by the wrist, squeezes tight enough to pull your attention straight back to her. "Dipper," she says in a heavy voice, and her eyes are wide and scared, you don't know how to arrange your own face to match hers. "What are you doing? Aren’t you taking this triangle thing too far? I thought... I thought it was just for fun?"

"It is," you say, because your compulsion feels too deep to explain, because the lights are just for you, and your thigh is dripping black when it should be gold and the knife in your hand is twitching, itching to just finish the cut so you can glow too. "It's just for fun. I was distracted. Didn't know what I was doing, ha. Isn't it funny?" You try and smile, and you know you're making the wrong face by the anguished expression on hers.

"Give me that," she says, holding out her hand for the knife. When you don't give it to her, she pulls it from your hand, and you only resist for the briefest of moments. She clutches it close to her, and you don't move. "I'm going to go and get the first aid kit, okay?" she tells you, and runs inside. You can hear her footsteps up the stairs before they get too faint, and you know she won't be long.

Your hands are empty though. There is a long, dead moment, and your hands are shaking, and there is a very sharp rock near your foot.

She screams when she comes back, but it's okay, because your leg is pouring out beautiful golden light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lovely telekinesiskid drew me [fanart](http://telekinesiskid.tumblr.com/post/128636649149/triangles-man) of that last part! It's so cool :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second to last chapter! Thanks again to everyone who's left kudos or a comment, I'm glad you're enjoying it so far! Dipdip's not doing that great huh :V
> 
> also, telekinesiskid drew me [more fanart](http://telekinesiskid.tumblr.com/post/128847896599/more-fanart-for-the-baes-fic) and it's so lovely!!! (.gif warning)

It's hard to sleep at night now, the lights are too bright. The glorious triangle you hung on the wall over your bed is so bright, sometimes you mistake it for the sun when you open your eyes in the morning. Sometimes you just lie there and watch it until your traitorous body drags you away from it into sleep you can't resist.

Your eyes are always dry and tired these days, and you think it’s because you've been staring at the triangles for too long, and you feel betrayed by your body that you can’t stare for longer. All you want is to see the colour, it's so beautiful against the grey of everything else. You're forced along on a shopping trip and while there are a fair few triangles scattered around Gravity Falls, there are not nearly enough. You're used to the shack, which you have wrought resplendent, and the dull, darkness of the rest of the town feels like it hurts almost as much as the light does. The supermarket is grey, the aisles black and white and nothing else, and you peel back the bandage on your leg so you can look at the gold and smile.

Mabel notices, and smacks you hard. You can see her nerves in the shake of her shoulder, and when she buys a new set of paints to start on her new project, you offer to pay for them as an apology gift for the scare you gave her the day before. You even get her extra. A lot extra.

It is not hard to sneak out at night, and the only advantage to the slow, open golf cart is how quietly it can drive. You push it out of the driveway and you take all your new paints and some brushes, and you make the town glow.

It's in the paper the next morning, someone has painted weird little triangles all down the main road in town, and you can't stop yourself from beaming. The article reports that all the marks were done in pink and purple and green, but you just saw glorious gold lighting up the night.

Grunkle Stan and Mabel both stop you together. "There's no way this wasn't you, kid," Stan says, and he looks weirdly proud and you can't guess why. He points to the flecks of paint you couldn't get off your fingernails, and he says, "I hope this means you’re moving on from scrawling them all over the shack. Good job not getting caught!"

"No problem, Grunkle Stan," you tell him with a grin.

Mabel looks absolutely betrayed as Stan claps you on the shoulder, and she chases you out of the room, shoves you on the shoulder in a way that is not near playful. "Why did you do that, Dipper?" she asks, and there's nothing but hurt in her eyes. "After you cut yourself? This is way out of hand, and it’s really starting to freak me out! Stop it!"

"I can't," you say, "I just like drawing them!" Even you can hear how flimsy your old defence sounds.

She stares, and then her eyes narrow dangerously. "This is something to do with Bill, isn't it?" she says. "He's possessed you or something! You need to stay up all night, so we can exorcise you, or -"

"It's not Bill," you snap, because it’s _not_ , he let you see them but your love for the triangles is all your own.

She glares. "There's no way you're doing this just because you feel like it," she says. "What did Bill say when he gave you the eyes? He said it was a favour, right, you didn't have to do anything? Then why are you doing _this_? The triangles are something to do with him, you said they’re not but just _look_ at them."

"They’re not connected to Bill – or, that don't have to be," you try and tell her. "When you were doing them it was just for fun, right?"

"There's no way it's nothing!" she snaps. "Look. give me your hands, okay?"

You let her take your hands in hers, and she holds them tight. You wait for her to say something else, but she doesn't, just stands and waits.

It's an empty, boring moment. Your mind wanders, and your hands start to shake, and there's a permanent marker in your front pocket, you could draw little triangles all up your arms. You try to pull your hands away but she holds them tight, doesn't let you. You tug harder.

"Right now," she says, "What are you trying to do?"

You try to find an explanation that doesn't sound crazy. "I'm just - I just want to -"

"What?" she demands. "Do _what_ , Dipper?"

You want to draw triangles so badly that you're starting to shake, and you tug sharply, free your hands from her hold and grab your marker.

"I knew it!" she shouts, before turning and running up the stairs.

It doesn't take you a second to work out what she's trying to do, and you race after her, slipping on the stairs in your hurry to get up to your room first, but you have spent the last few weeks drawing triangles, while Mabel has balanced art with running and jumping on things. You make it to the doorway just in time to see her on your bed, reaching up to your huge, bright sun, and she grabs it by the corner, tears it in half and you scream and hurl yourself at her while the light goes out. She snatches for all the other pages you've pinned up as you pounce on her, grabbing desperately for her hands while she shreds the papers, putting out so many little lights.

You blink in the darkness that's left in their wake, your room hazy and dim without your sun. You feel lost and sad and wronged, and you slap Mabel hard. She screeches at you, scrambles back and stares, shouts, "What is _wrong_ with you, Dipper?"

You look at the half of the huge paper left on your wall, two incomplete points. It looks dim, and dull, and the radiance has been replaced with plain black ink. There's a pit of loss in your stomach, but it's starting to feel strange. Now that the sun is gone, you don't know how you ever thought it could be so important - a marking on a piece of paper. It doesn't glow. It's not magic. It can be torn in half so easily. You pick up one of the remaining scraps of the little sheets, where plenty of little gold shapes still shine up at you. Slowly, you tear down the middle, cutting a dozen in half. They go out, and they're just little lines in ink. Worthless. Nothing.

Not worth hitting Mabel over, and the realisation that you actually _did_ slams into you hard. You hold out a hand to her, feel your cheeks burn with shame, tell her, "I'm sorry, I - I don't know why I thought they were so important."

She's scared and suspicious, and no wonder, but she still takes your hand. "It's got to be Bill," she says quietly. "He's doing something to you, Dipper. He's making you crazy."

You look at the mark on your thigh, luminous even through the fabric of your shorts. It's still nice, it's still good to see something other than grey on your own flesh. But you don't want to make any more. "Maybe we can summon him again," you suggest. "And... ask?" He’d said you were friends.

"Do you think he'll tell you?" Mabel says doubtfully. "He might just make it worse. Maybe we can beat this! If we take down the rest of the triangles, and you stop drawing them?"

"Yeah," you say, and you're not sure, but you're still shaky and you want to do what Mabel says, want to make it up to her, and you want her to be right beside. You look at your leg again and the yellow might be nice, but you try to conjure the appropriate fear - that you _cut yourself_ to get it, without noticing. That something was wrong with you. That something is probably still wrong with you. If you agree with Mabel, then maybe it won't be wrong anymore.

You hold your hands still through the lulls in dinner, and you sit on your them while you watch television. You're distracted, bored, aching for movement, but Mabel works hard to talk to you and engage you, and she fills your evening well enough that your hands can stay still.

But the night is long and she's exhausted from the chase and fight of the afternoon. She leaves you alone when she falls asleep, unfairly escaping where you can't follow, and you stare at the black of your wall uncomfortably. Without the light, it seems so much darker, feels like a void, feels like blackest night and you know you could light it up, give you something to find comfort in. The outline of the window is as bright as ever, and you turn to it for comfort instead. You can see it through your eyelids and it's so good, gold in the empty world, and you can only fall asleep with it searing through into your corneas.

You're woken up by a harsh shake and someone shouting, "Dipper," and you wake up to the weirdest mix of fear and anger you've ever seen on Mabel's face. "Why did you do this?" She shouts.

You don't know what she means until you roll over and see your wall. The light is overwhelming - your sun is back, and you carved a dozen smaller ones inside it. There's no doubt it was you, not with the knife resting by your pillow, scraps of sawdust littering your sheets. Your whole wall is radiant, and your sister is furious, and you... you don't remember waking up. You don't remember cutting the shapes in.

Mabel helps you pin a sheet over it so Stan won't see, and you don't tell her that the light shines through it all the same. You can feel your thoughts muddying as you look at the glow, the importance of the triangles settling back in your gut and you know you’re losing clarity but the light is gentle, looks so warm, looks so _bright_ in your dark world. It’s a fair trade, surely?

Mabel keeps you busy all morning but you can tell she's as bored of trying to engage you in a game as you are of playing it, and you offer to take a walk in the woods. She squints at you, struggles to find the harm in your request, but eventually acquiesces with a shrug. "Be back by dinner," she says, and you nod, and you smile, and you stride out towards the trees.

The shack glows, but you know parts of the woods are better and you follow the lights in to where they're thickest. You remember dimly that to your old eyes, this part of the wood was almost impenetrably dark, but you can see what you couldn't before, that every inch of every tree is lit up like Christmas. It's beautiful and bright and you find a clearing, scrape a dozen more lights into the ground, and you lie down in the middle feeling like you're in a sun room.

"Enjoying it, kid?" Bill asks, his voice curling up into your ear. His eye is the brightest thing you’ve ever seen, a hot white-gold that it almost hurts to look at, and you can't pick the individual teeth out of his halo anymore. "You're doing a great job. Keep it up."

You wonder what you’re doing well at, and you wonder when you’ll ever find the downside to your new eyes, and you think maybe there isn’t one. Maybe Bill really just did you a favour, maybe you really are friends. You smile, feeling happy and warm and drugged by all the lights, and you doze under the glow.

You're woken by a crash, a cry, worried shouting in the distance. You sit up, still bathed in the honey lights of the trees, and you can pick out the voices of Mabel and Soos and Stan, all shouting for you. You can't guess why, it's still light out, but you start stumbling in their direction anyway. "I'm here!" you call, and there's a rush of movement towards you, inelegant thrashing in the bushes, and then your whole family is surrounding you, gripping you tight, scolding and soothing and you can feel their fear and relief in equal parts as you are circled in a tight hug.

"Did you get lost?" Mabel asks anxiously.

"No," you start, and you're going to tell them you were just sleeping when you catch a glimpse of the midnight sky, the torches in their hands. You can barely pick the torchlight out of the glow of the trees but you remember what it's like without the world lighting up for you, you remember what it's like in the dark, and you know the truth is not what they want to hear from you. "I got turned around on my way back," you lie instead and they all nod and hug you and tell you not to do it again, to stay closer to home, and they lead you back to the shack. No one notices how easily you find your way in the 'dark'.

Mabel doesn't let you out of her sight for half a dozen days, and all the while the lights are getting brighter. They're blinding in their own way, and you go back to drawing them when you think you can get away with it. The light on your wall isn't covered by the sheet and you bask in its glow every night, even though it's too bright to sleep through and the best you can manage is passing out under it every night.

You can see them just as clearly with your eyes closed, now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the last chapter! Again, huge thanks to everyone who's been reading. I wasn't sure if anyone would be interested in this sort of story, so the response it's gotten is kind of amazing to me :V Also as a quick head's up for this chapter I decided to add a gore tag. 
> 
> Also! [Incredibly cool fanart](http://thatssocreepy.tumblr.com/post/128922187354/im-pretty-amazed-by-this-amazing-fic-holy-cow-it), from thatssocreepy. Thank you so so much, I love it!

You don't go into the woods, and that's good enough for people to take their eyes off you long enough for you to draw more triangles. When they take your pens away, you use your nails, cutting crude markings into the dullness of your skin and delighting in the shine you can produce. Their words carry less meaning. People shake you a lot and say things in serious voices and you don't listen. You can feel tension in the air around you all the time now, but the whole shack is glowing with the marks you've carved deep and it's so good you can almost relax. You think you've been doing the right thing, you think you've been doing good things.

The pupils start to follow you. You see them roll around in the eyes you've drawn for them, tracking you around the house, and you think that's good, you smile when you see them, you wave to the ones on the walls. You pull the sheet down at night and you think you can see the eye crease up with laughter and it's so good, so beautiful, you're so glad.

Bill stops by sometimes, when you’re alone, and he's the brightest thing in the world, swirling gold and vibrant blue like a gas flame, and his spark is so pleasing to your eyes even as they itch and ache at the intensity of his fire. He's colours you don't normally get to see and he whispers in your ear, tells you, "You're doing great, kid!" and "Keep it up!" and it's so nice to be _appreciated_. Your family is getting scared of you. Mabel has started duct-taping your hands together in the mornings ‘to keep you safe’ but you chew through it. She stuffs cushions in your mouth and begs you to come back to yourself, and Stan has started talking about 'institutes' but they're all empty words from droning mouths. Gravity Falls is small, it’s isolated, they don’t talk about the kinds of problems you’re having and any institutes are distant. From the words that filter through to you, you know Stan’s still hoping you might just snap out of it on your own. Mabel’s made him start looking, though.

The triangles are finally starting to light up the surroundings, you think, as you study the shadows in the shack. Or maybe there are just so many of them now that the gold is ubiquitous. They're real and good and you are happy wherever you are, you stand on a stool and carve them into the ceiling at three in the morning when no one can stop you, and the whole house is practically gold-plated.

Except. There are still patches of grey. You seek them out, scrawl little eyes into every gap you can find, and the increasing bloom from the lines is helping to fill in all the little spaces you miss. You work on the ceilings at night and you sleep during the day when even the lights can't hold you in the world anymore, and you think you have almost nearly finished what you need to do.

The next time Bill passes through, his halo of teeth is shivering, and it takes you a while to recognise it as laughter. He's shaking with it, claps a boiling tar hand on your shoulder, tells you, "Well _done_ kid. You've only missed two spots!"

"What?" you ask, because you don't know where, you've engraved the house with the symbol like you're meant to, you've filled your world back up with all the colour you've lost.

Bill turns his face to you and you can't read any expression through his grin. "Haven't you noticed?" he asks and he's happy, he's teasing, you're glad he's pleased with you because he gave you _such_ a gift, did you such a favour, you want to pay him back. Your old world was never as beautiful as the one he's let you see. "Shooting Star and the old man - they're not that colourful, are they?"

You hadn't noticed. Bill's laugh lingers echoing as he leaves and you sit up straighter in bed. You can never tell what time of day it is anymore, you live in 24-hour light, but Mabel's asleep so you guess it's night. She's restless, tired, heavy marks under her eyes. Her hair looks stringy and you think of how many hours she's spent worrying over you and trying to keep you from harming yourself. She sleeps deep, exhausted, completely washed out and grey. You remember how bright she used to be, how she'd drape herself in colours and rainbows. It's a shame to see her so grey. It's a shame to see her without colour.

You know where they hid your knives.

She wakes up on the first cut and she screams and she screams, fighting you desperately but losing until Stan comes to grab you, hold you down, shout and swear while Mabel sobs. She is glowing bright gold from a handful of wonky triangle eyes, but it's enough. You try to do Stan, too, but he smacks the knife out of your hands at the first press of the blade on his skin.

They tie you up. They leave you alone while they talk, and you sit and bask in the lights you carved into every corner of the little store room they locked you in, and you're happy enough. It's a shame you couldn't fix Stan, but at least Mabel can glow now, she can be beautiful to two sets of eyes. You can't wait for her to stop crying so she will thank you.

They take you away in the police car. They move you to an 'institute' and it is dull and it is grey and you hate it. They won't let you near anything sharp enough to carve with, and whenever you get your hands on a pen they come and scold you and wipe away all your lights. You can't sleep at night, it's too dark, you're afraid. Your body is wrecked, you can only dig so many more marks into yourself using only your nails and they keep stopping you, drugging you, trying to make you as still and grey as the rest of the place.

It works. The lack of gold gets to you faster than you expect. It is not the sudden revolution that Mabel tearing the triangles over your bed was, but it still happens, the scars on your leg seeming to dim as the grey of the world overwhelms you.

Away from the lights, you think your thoughts get clearer. The furious need to draw triangles fades while you’re awake and you can function, you can think, you can recall everything you did and once again the insignificance of all those little shapes dawns on you.

You decide the triangles are making you crazy. You know it’s the light, the colour, the way it burns into your brain and keeps you up at night. You’re safe for now, away from them, but they’re just lying dormant in the back of your mind. You wake up with huge red marks on your wrists where you’ve been straining against your restraints, aching to paint your walls with whatever you can get, and you know you’d cut open your arm to do it if you’re not in your right mind.

Mabel comes to visit, and you’re awake and well enough to see her, to smile at her, to hug her, and you see gold light streaming out at you through her bandages and you want to throw up. Guilt is thick and heavy in your gut, churning like bile, and she tells you you’re going to get better, your doctors think you’re getting better now that you’re in your right mind in the daytime, and she says maybe you can come home again soon.

Home, without the restraints on your bed at night. Home where even if you can control yourself Bill will come by and whisper in your ear because he thinks you’re _friends_. Home with Mabel, and Stan, and she’s smiling at you but her sweater is covering a dozen jagged scars.

You know you’re not going to get better. You know the lights in the shack will consume you as soon as you step inside, and you know that next time you won’t make the same mistakes, you won’t miss a spot. All because you can see the lights; all because Bill restored your eyes. But you can ruin them again.

You tell your doctors you’d like to try a night without being strapped down, to see how you cope, and you look well enough that they agree. When you sneak down the hall in the night, you are not caught, and though you think you see a dim gold glow around the sleeping security guards, it disappears when you stare.

You get a butcher’s knife from the kitchen and you think about going back to your room to do it but there’s no real point, there’s no need to delay. Hesitation will weaken you, the gold might seep back into your brain. All the lights you see are going to drive you mad, there’s no escaping to closed eyes, no reprieve so long as you are able to see. You know there are worse things than being blind now.

The scar on your thigh twinkles up at you, and you raise the tip of your blade up in front of your right eye, until it’s too close to focus on, just cold, blurry steel and you think you might lose your nerve if you try and do it gently. You don’t think there’s a way to do it gently. You drive the knife into your right eye.

Clear liquid splatters out, followed by a gush of blood as you burst the vessels behind your eye. It’s hot agony like you’ve never felt and you scream and you howl, yanking the blade back out, and you want to stop, find any way to make the pain end, but you’ve made sound now, you don’t have long, you have to do the other.

The handle slips in your newly-slicked grip but you clench it tighter, wrap your hands together to steady them, and try to still your shakes. You feel so sick, you can feel your frantic heartbeat in your head, you can see viscous fluids leaking out of your right eye, and you force the knife into the left. You lose your sight to the warm, wet blade, blessed blackness, but you can still feel the knife stuck inside your eyeball. It scrapes against the bone of the back of the socket, you feel steel grate against your skull, and you gag, retch, pass out.

You wake up to total darkness, the smell of hospital-level disinfectant and the now familiar feel of gauze wrapped tight around your eyes. “Hello?” you call to the room, but there’s no answer. Carefully you sit up, unwind the bandages over your eyes because you need to feel the scars yourself, need the visceral proof that you did it.

There are long, jagged, damp lines of still-setting scars through your eyelids, and you smile a weak, quivering grin. You managed this much, at least.

The door opens, and you turn your head to the sound, still smiling, beginning to wonder how you’re going to explain this to anyone, how having blackness behind your eyes is so much better than gold.

Only, there’s a light. Burning gold and gas-flame blue reach you, absolutely clear through your mangled eyelids. The laugh starts at the same time as you realise. “Oh, kid,” Bill Cipher says, and he sounds so absolutely fond of you, so completely unrepentant. “You thought it was _just_ in your eyes?”

You turn your head down, and there’s a light coming from your leg, the shaky edges and jagged pupil glaring up in gold straight into your head. There’s a hand on your chin, dark and heavy, turning your head for you while Bill says, “There’s a forest outside, Pine Tree, and doesn’t it look nice? Can’t you see it even better than before?”  

 You can’t see the window, but you can see the trees. The world isn’t grey anymore, it’s black, and spattered across it are a million golden triangles, bypassing your eyes completely. Bill’s got a hand on your shoulder, holding you still as you shake because your head hurts, your eyes _hurt_ , what did you _do_?

You carved out your eyes and you can still see the triangles – you can’t see anything else. Shivers wrack your shoulders, your whole body convulsing, and Bill’s still got a hand on you, like he’s trying to be comforting. You’d cry but you don’t think you can anymore.

You feel like there’s a cold blade buried deep in your skull, but the light from the woods is already soothing, gentle gold, calming, and you relax in inches. The pain fades and Bill glows brighter, the woods outside are luminous, it’s like a sunrise, and you begin to remember how warm that light felt, enough to melt the pain away.

It’s almost good, you start to realise, as blue flame curls around your ear. Before, when your eyes were close enough to working, the rest of the grey scenery got in the way. Now against a black canvas, the lights stand out, bright and beautiful and ready to be your entire world. You don’t think you need anything else.

“Don’t you love it, Pine Tree?” Bill asks, and you really do. “I’ve got so many eyes and they glow just for you! But don’t you think there could be more?”

You do. Bill puts something in your hands and you run your fingers along the edge, find the blade of a knife, a familiar one still warm and slick with something. You find your way out of the hospital with Bill’s burning hand on your shoulder and blue flame curling over your ears, and you are going to make the whole world gold.


End file.
